George Washington Carver is universally portrayed as the “Peanut Man,” the discoverer of a myriad of uses for the peanut in food recipes, cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline and even nitroglycerin.

But as African American History Month is recognized in February this year, there is recognition that his work, life and faith was much more than that.

In his 2015 declaration for the history month, Barack Obama wrote, “For generations, the story of American progress has been shaped by the inextinguishable beliefs that change is always possible and a brighter future lies ahead. With tremendous strength and abiding resolve, our ancestors – some of whom were brought to this land in chains – have woven their resilient dignity into the fabric of our nation and taught us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history. It was these truths that found expression as foot soldiers and Freedom Riders sat in and stood up, marched and agitated for justice and equality.”

“This audacious movement gave birth to a new era of civil and voting rights, and slowly, we renewed our commitment to an ideal at the heart of our founding: no matter who you are, what you look like, how modest your beginnings, or the circumstances of your birth, you deserve every opportunity to achieve your God-given potential.

“As we mark National African American History Month, we celebrate giants of the civil rights movement and countless other men and women whose names are etched in the hearts of their loved ones and the cornerstones of the country they helped to change. We pause to reflect on our progress and our history – not only to remember, but also to acknowledge our unfinished work. We reject the false notion that our challenges lie only in the past, and we recommit to advancing what has been left undone,” he said.

Along with his research on peanuts, Carver was a pioneer in the development of other farm products, such as soybeans and sweet potatoes. His work aided farmers in crop rotation, increasing the diversity of their harvest and improving their nutrition and quality of life.

Carver was honored for his work in many ways. In 1916, he was named a Fellow by the Royal Society of London. In 1923, he was presented with the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for outstanding achievement received an honorary doctorate from Simpson College.

Carver received correspondence from across the world, and he advised leaders from Mohandas K. Gandhi to Josef Stalin, who in 1931 invited Carver to Russia. Thomas Edison reportedly offered Carver a position and a high salary to come work at Menlo Park, an offer he declined.

In 1943, the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver was launched in his honor and in 1965, the ballistic missile submarine USS George Washington Carver (SSBN-656) was given his name. The U.S. Congress also designated Jan. 6, the anniversary of his death, as George Washington Carver Recognition Day.

But there are other facets of his life that are not as well known that may be deemed as “politically incorrect.”

Carver said he was born into slavery sometime in January 1864, though he wasn’t sure. Some evidence indicates he was born in July 1861. He was born on the farm of a German immigrant couple, Moses and Susan Carver, in Diamond, Missouri. His mother was named Mary; his father is unknown, though he may have been a field hand named Giles who was killed in a farming accident before George was born.

When he was a few weeks old, he, his mother and his sister were kidnapped by Confederate raiders and taken to Kentucky and sold. Moses Carver sent friends to track down the thieves and traded his best horse to retrieve them. The thieves took the horse and only returned the infant George, lying on the ground, sick with the whooping cough. Carver never saw his mother and sister again. After returning to the farm, Carver was taught to read by Moses Carver and his wife Susan, and as was the custom of the time, George took the surname of his former owners.

It was on the farm where he was a former slave that George Washington Carver became a Christian. Federer’s book noted Carver wrote, “I had been a Christian since about 8 years old.”

Carver had a thirst for education, and that longing took him through a series of jobs to fund his education at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, and later to Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (Iowa State) as its first African-American student. It was from Iowa A&M that Carver obtained both a bachelors (1894) and master’s degree (1896) in science. He then went on to become that institution’s first African-American faculty member. One of his students was Henry A. Wallace, who became U.S. secretary of agriculture and later vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the spring of 1896, Carver received a letter from Tuskegee Institute President Booker T. Washington:

Tuskegee Institute seeks to provide education – a means for survival to those who attend.

Our students are poor, often starving. They travel miles of torn roads, across years of poverty. We teach them to read and write, but words cannot fill stomachs. They need to learn how to plant and harvest crops ….

I cannot offer you money, position or fame. The first two you have. The last, from the place you now occupy, you will no doubt achieve.

Carver accepted the position and responded to Washington in a letter which said, in part, “Some months ago I read your stirring address delivered at Chicago and I said amen to all you said; furthermore you have the correct solution to the ‘race problem.'”

Carver did not become truly rich nor receive a high position, but it was at Tuskegee that he did receive more fame than he could ever have imagined. He also worked in his own way to solve the “race problem.”

Carver established an Agricultural Department at Tuskegee. Between classes he would visit nearby farmers and teach them farming techniques, such as crop rotation, fertilization and erosion prevention. Working with the farmers, he discovered that the soil was becoming depleted by constantly planting cotton in the same fields season after season. To restore the soil, Carver showed them the benefits of crop rotation and planting legumes, such as peanuts, in the fields to replenish the nutrients in the soil.

All through his life, George Washington Carver saw no conflict between science and his faith. He called his laboratory “God’s Little Workshop” and said that he never invented anything; God showed it to him.

He also said: “Why should we who believe in Christ be so surprised at what God can do with a willing man in a laboratory? Some things must be baffling to the critic who has never been born again.”

In a letter to the New York Times in response to an editorial attempting to discredit Carver, the Tuskegee Institute and blacks in general, he wrote: “I regret exceedingly that such a gross misunderstanding should arise as to what was meant by ‘Divine inspiration.’ … Paul, the great Scholar, says, … in Galatians 1:12, For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

As for the “race problem,” Carver had a simple solution. He believed that character was more important than color or race. His writings show that he believed that black America had a lot to offer society. He wrote that blacks were a very smart, hardworking people, but the thing paramount in their life should be to build families, buy land, buy businesses and be able to contribute to society.

Jessie Lee Peterson, an author and radio host, has studied Carver’s life and found that Carver knew that blacks had a lot to offer America. Peterson was born in Alabama, not far from Tuskegee Institute. His high school agricultural teacher used to take his class to Tuskegee for a week every year to learn about farming and Carver and Booker T. Washington.

In an interview, he said Carver came from a society that had no rights, yet he did everything one could do with the sweet potato. He also showed people how to treat the soil.

“You have to have something special to do that,” he said.

Peterson also said Carver had love for his enemies instead of hate, because he knew that all white people were not racists.

“The battle (against racism) was not a physical battle between blacks and whites, it was a spiritual battle between good and evil – right versus wrong.”

Would be crying over dependence on government

Peterson also believes Carver stood for principle, hard work, overcoming anything and not hating an enemy. He stood for family and country.

He thought that Carver would be “turning over in his grave” to see what had happened to black America. He would be “crying in his heart for the way that most black people are.”

“Instead of building families they are relying on government. They are not buying property and they are not buying businesses,” he said.

“Because of that, they have failed with their families, they have failed with their community, and they have failed this great nation and Carver would be absolutely saddened by that, I have no doubt.

“So many of them are not thinking for themselves but, instead, relying on so-called black leaders to think and do for them. For them, everything is built around their color and instead of their character,” Peterson said.

“It got that way because the government came in and offered them free stuff. LBJ got them to believe that this was a racist society and they couldn’t make it without government help. He needed to do that to imprint them on the Democratic Party for [the party’s] own personal gain.”

When the self-appointed civil rights leaders came to the fore, Peterson said, “everything went to hell in a hand basket.”

Peterson said that rather than a culture of self-reliance, government is promoting a culture of servitude. People who choose to rely on the government rather than God and themselves will give the excuse that they are “trapped” by the system.

Carver had an answer for that.

He said, “Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.”

In his book “Scam,” Peterson wrote that “‘so-called’ civil rights activists, such as Jesse Jackson, were looking after their own career rather than black people.”

Carver, Peterson said, “would have repudiated President Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and several other so-called civil rights leaders, including T. D. Jakes , Martin Luther King III, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and all the people who attended Michael Brown’s funeral and gave him a hero’s departure. ”

“They treated him as if he were a hero and not a thug. Carver would have spoken out loudly about that,” Peterson said.

“If George Washington Carver were alive today, I have no doubt that he would repudiate Michael Brown and Michael Brown’s family. He would have repudiated Michael Brown for robbing a convenience store and attacking a cop and showing a lack of character as well as his father and mother for not staying together and raise a good citizen,” said Peterson.

“He would have been 100 percent against the people who burned businesses and destroyed property there (Ferguson, Missouri). The unfortunate thing is that he would have been labeled an Uncle Tom and a sellout. The liberal media would have gone after him for that.”‘Civil rights compared to what?’

“When we talk about civil rights, we need to put it in perspective. Civil rights compared to what? George Washington Carver was a man that was born a slave, yet he revolutionized the Southern economy. This was at a time when discrimination was the order of the day. What he was saying was that hatred, bitterness, and anger are not solutions,” Kinchlow said.

“George Washington Carver said this about race. ‘There is not any one or two things that will solve the race situation except the Golden Rule way of living. All race questions and issues would pale into insignificance if we would all live in accordance with the Golden Rule.’

“This is a man who was born and lived under all the pressures of slavery. Carver would have an entirely different message for the young men and women in today’s society. There is no college or high school that African-American students cannot attend today. Even when he taught at Tuskegee, which was a segregated school, he taught African-American students not be looking at themselves as being black, but to understand that ‘the genetic code has no meaning (in terms of race). Race and creed have no recognition in the eyes of the Deity. There is no question or questions peculiar to the Negro, but simply a problem with humanity. The same methods and procedures that worked in the civilization or evangelization of all other races are equally applicable to the Negro.

“He was firm believer that God was no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34) and He couldn’t build a spiritual kingdom on the foundation of prejudice and grief. He said if we hate our fellow man, then we are in big trouble because we shut the love of God out of our lives. Carver said, ‘Hate is the very embodiment of everything that is wrong; nothing too revolting or destructive for it to do; it turns us into fiends incarnate. … Love is the only force that has held the world together to date. God is infinite, the highest embodiment of love. We are finite, surrounded and often filled with hate. We can only understand the infinite as we lose the finite and take on the infinite.’

“That is what we should have done, but, unfortunately, that’s exactly what we haven’t done today. George Washington Carver would roundly and loudly condemn that.”

He found one of the outstanding traits of Carver’s life was his humility. Federer related some anecdotal evidence to prove his point.

Carver was invited to speak at an event and was slated to sit at the head table.

“He politely declined and chose to eat with the staff. He knew that while it was an honor for him, he knew that some people would take offense at that and wouldn’t listen to his message,” Federer said.

“He was also in Kansas City one time with a white friend in a restaurant where he was refused service. His white friend left the store when he did saying he was not going to patronize a place that refused him service. That was how it was in his time.”

Humbleness

Federer also related a story that spoke both to Carver’s humility and his religious faith.

On Jan. 21, 1921, at the request of the United Peanut Growers Association, Carver addressed the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee regarding a proposed tariff on imported peanuts.

When he came to testify, a guard looked at his old, worn suit (Carver only had one suit, but put a fresh flower in the lapel every day), didn’t realize who he was and sent him to a side door – the servant’s entrance. It was there he waited the entire day.

When the committee realized what happened and called him to testify, they brought him up the service elevator and informed him that he only had 10 minutes to speak. Carver then began pulling out all the things he invented from the peanut out of his bag. The committee became so enthralled that the chairman said: “Go ahead brother. Your time is unlimited.” Carver spoke for one hour and 45 minutes, explaining the many foods products derived from the peanut. In his testimony, Carver had the following exchange with the committee chairman:

If you go to the first chapter of Genesis, we can interpret very clearly, I think, what God intended when he said, “Behold, I have given you every herb that bears seed. To you it shall be meat.” This is what He means about it. It shall be meat. There is everything there to strengthen and nourish and keep the body alive and healthy.”

After the address, the committee chair asked: “Dr. Carver, how did you learn all of these things?”

Carver answered, “From an old book.”

“What book?” asked the chairman.

Carver replied, “The Bible.”

The chair inquired, “Does the Bible tell about peanuts?”

“No, sir,” Carver replied. “But it tells about the God who made the peanut. I asked Him to show me what to do with the peanut, and He did.”

Federer said: “He could have gotten flustered, he could have gotten his feelings hurt, but he stayed focused. With these and many other slights, he could have taken offense, but he didn’t and that’s one reason he stands out in history. We can take a lesson from Carver because everyone at one point in their life is treated badly. One has the choice of becoming bitter or rising above that.”

Jessie Lee Peterson expanded on Federer’s comment.

“You can find rotten apples in any barrel, but the truth is the black Americans are not suffering because of white racism. White Americans have apologized; they have given blacks everything they have asked for: affirmative action, free housing. I believe there is not a single university that has not gone out of their way trying to get blacks into their schools. It’s all there for black people, but because blacks are angry and kept angry by the race hustlers, even Barack Obama, they don’t take advantage of it. Until we deal with black racism to white Americans and black conservatives, this racism is never going to end. You can’t solve a problem by solving half a problem, you have to solve the whole problem and we have to deal with black racism if we want to heal this mess.”

Ben Kinchlow agrees.

“George Washington Carver did not use race as an excuse to fail. He could have easily done that. He was a sick young boy and was a sick young child, yet sought God’s insight and rather than using race or color as an excuse for failure, he utilized this to draw closer to his Creator and become one of the foremost scientists of his day. That is the message I want to give young African Americans today.”

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/experts-uncover-real-george-washington-carver/feed/0Evidence for biblical Christ put under microscopehttp://www.wnd.com/2014/12/evidence-for-biblical-christ-put-under-microscope/
http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/evidence-for-biblical-christ-put-under-microscope/#respondSun, 21 Dec 2014 00:10:51 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=1512575By any measure, Jesus of Nazareth is the most significant person who has ever lived. He has influenced more lives and had more written about him than any other person in history.

As the Apostle John concluded his biography about the life of the most remarkable person who ever walked the face of the earth, he wrote: “Of course, Jesus also did many other things, and I suppose that if every one of them were written down the world couldn’t contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25, ISV).

Almost from the birth of the Christian church, however, heresies plagued it.

Paul wrote about these heresies when he wrote to the Galatians: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of the Messiah and, instead, are following a different gospel, not that another one really exists. To be sure, there are certain people who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel about the Messiah” (Galatians 1:6-7, ISV).

Peter addressed the issue when he wrote a letter to an unnamed Christian church: “Now there were false prophets among the people, just as there also will be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies and even deny the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves” (2 Peter 2:1, ISV).

The heresies took many forms. Adoptionism, for example, was an early Christian heresy that taught Jesus was born as a non-divine man, was supremely virtuous and was adopted later as “Son of God” by the descent of the Spirit on him.

Docetism was another heresy that held Jesus’ physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion. It maintained that Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die, but in reality he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die.

In the seventh century, Monothelitism taught Jesus had two natures but only one will, contrary to orthodox Christology, which teaches that Jesus Christ has two wills, human and divine, corresponding to his two natures.

Gnosticism was a very popular heresy and had several variations, one of which stated that good and evil are equally powerful and that material things are evil. Other Gnostics believed that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was an agent of the true God and brought knowledge of truth to man via the fall of man. Others believed that the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve was a hero. The God who forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge is the enemy.

All of these heresies were condemned by the early church, but their teaching carries on to the present time.

The most recent and well known heresy surrounds a process rather than an idea. The Jesus Seminar gained influence in late 20th century New Testament scholarship primarily in the United States. Organized in 1985, the Jesus Seminar consisted of a group of 30 people whose mission was to “renew the quest of the historical Jesus and to report the results of its research to the general public.” The group, called “fellows,” eventually grew to 300 people.

In the first phase of its work, the fellows looked at the sayings attributed to Jesus in various sources and voted on their validity. Most of the sayings were deemed to be from a source other than Christ.

The Jesus Seminar also looked at Jesus’ deeds and deemed that the only deeds that could have been attributed to Christ were non-divine in nature. His baptism by John, His association with social outcasts, and His trial and crucifixion were the only types of deeds the Seminar would attribute to Jesus.

In sum, the Jesus Seminar characterized Jesus, if he existed at all, as a wise rabbi who taught in parables, befriended peasants and reached out to the disenfranchised.

In response to this and other unorthodox teachings, Missler and Welty wrote “I, Jesus: An Autobiography.” The new book documents a real, historical Jesus who speaks in His own words about Himself, His purpose, his Nature and His mission.

In late January, the authors were discussing the cultural mythology surrounding Jesus of Nazareth, and it occurred to them that the issue of the person of Jesus should be addressed. The discussions led to the book.

The book is laid out as a textbook, but it reads like an adventure story, examining the claims Jesus made about Himself and the claims that were made about Him in the Hebrew Scriptures and by His followers.

The book first addresses the question, “Did Jesus really live?”

Several classical references to Jesus survive from Greek and Latin sources. The accounts are almost universally hostile to Christianity, attempting to explain away the miraculous nature of Jesus and the events that surrounded his life.

However, the sources conclude:

A group that called itself “Christians” derived its name from the Latin term Christus, a transliteration of the Greek term Christos, which means “Christ” and was used as a title for Jesus of Nazareth.

Their leader lived in Judea and was executed there during the reign of Tiberius under Governor Pontius Pilate.

The new movement was centered on what one non-Christian writer referred to as “a most mischievous superstition,” a reference to belief that Jesus rose from the dead shortly after his execution by crucifixion during a full moon festival, which the New Testament calls the Passover, Festival of the Jews.

The new movement began in Judea and spread rapidly to Rome.

Early Christians considered Jesus to be a divine being, though virtually none of the Roman sources articulated clearly what they or the Christians meant by the term. They only concluded the claim was considered to be a national security threat to the Roman government.

Thallus (ca. A.D. 52), arguably the earliest non-biblical writer to mention the events of the New Testament surrounding the person of Jesus, is so ancient that his writings are no longer extant. But Julius Africanus, writing in his Chronography 18:1 (ca. A.D. 221), quotes Thallus as having attempted to explain away the darkness that occurred at the point of Jesus’ crucifixion: “On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.”

Pliny the Younger (ca. A.D. 61-113) is known to have written of early Christians: “They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food – but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”

Other contemporary historians note the belief not only in Christ’s existence but also His miraculous works.

In his blatant hostility to all things Christian, Celsus (ca. A.D. 175) inadvertently reinforces the New Testament record in more than 80 separate and distinct quotations from the Bible, thus affirming their presence early in church history. His writings contain the astonishing admission that the miracles claimed in the New Testament to have been performed by Jesus were believed as fact by Christians well before Celsus wrote his works in the second half of the second century.

He writes: “Jesus had come from a village in Judea, and was the son of a poor Jewess who gained her living by the work of her own hands. His mother had been turned out of doors by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, on being convicted of adultery. … Being thus driven away by her husband, and wandering about in disgrace, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard. Jesus, on account of his poverty, was hired out to go to Egypt. While there he acquired certain powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing. He returned home, highly elated at possessing these powers, and on the strength of them gave himself out to be a god.”

Celsus does not debunk the miraculous works but rather tries to explain them away as Jesus learning magical works known by the Egyptians.

Missler and Welty go on to document 32 statements Jesus made to His followers that could only be true if He were indeed divine.

Matthew 10:32-33 records the following rather startling statement: “Therefore, everyone who acknowledges me before people I, too, will acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever denies me before people I, too, will deny before my Father in heaven” (ISV).

The book also explains the claims about Jesus made by John the Baptist, the Apostles John, Peter, Paul and Jude, the younger brother of Jesus. It also documents the claims that Jesus wrote about Himself in His letters to seven churches that are documented in the book of Revelation.

Toward the end of the book, the authors address the claims about Jesus made in the Old Testament, many of which are contained within the internal design of the Scriptures themselves.

Each of the claims of and about Jesus is laid out in separate sections for easy reference. The layout makes it easy to find the answers to questions such as, “You can’t prove that Christ ever existed,” or “Christ never said he was God.”

So if you are a serious student of the Bible or have just a passing acquaintance with the Scriptures, this book is both a ready reference and guide to a grand adventure to learn about the most amazing man who ever lived.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/evidence-for-biblical-christ-put-under-microscope/feed/0Fukushima disaster far from overhttp://www.wnd.com/2014/12/fukushima-disaster-far-from-over/
http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/fukushima-disaster-far-from-over/#respondSun, 14 Dec 2014 21:12:27 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=1491745A lot of ink was consumed by media after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station disaster in March 2011, and then everything got quiet. With most of the media silent about the cleanup, the public may think the worst is over and the operating company TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) is cleaning up the site.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Once the remediation efforts began on the irradiated plant site, it quickly became clear the contaminated water being stored at Fukushima was going to be the largest component to the mediation efforts.

Water from the devastated reactor cooling system was leaking out into the ocean, allowing it to spread into the immediate vicinity and around the world through ocean currents. Added to this, rainwater runoff coming from the surrounding mountains flowed through the devastated site, picking up radioactive material on its way to the ocean.

The influx of contaminated water prompted grave concerns over the impact on sea life in the area and around the world.

Rapid expansion in number of storage tanks

Water, water everywhere

The first response to combat the water contamination problem was to reject remediation proposals given by experts, such as building a concrete wall 60 feet into the ground to stop the estimated 76,000 gallons of groundwater from leaking into the ocean. Instead, TEPCO hurriedly constructed plastic- and clay-lined underground water storage pits that soon developed leaks.

When that plan didn’t work, their next step was to build above-ground storage tanks – a lot of them – to store the cooling water and some of the groundwater runoff. At the time, there was no good, efficient way to clean the water, so TEPCO just kept building more tanks to try to stay ahead of the problem.

As the tank farm grew, it was discovered that more than 300 tons of radioactive water had leaked out of a storage tank onto the site. The 2,400 gallons of water per day leaking into the ocean was heavily contaminated with strontium-90 and cesium-137. With so many tanks on the site, more leaks were anticipated.

To solve the problem, plant and government officials then decided to build an “ice wall” around the reactor site to halt the flow of water. The plan was to construct a $300 million mile-long subterranean ice wall around the complex to collect the runoff, funnel it into trenches, freeze it and then transport it to safe disposal sites elsewhere.

The technology was not new. Ice walls have used in the mining industry for years, but it’s the first time it was constructed and deployed in radioactive conditions by workers in bulky and cumbersome radiation suits. Work commenced on the ice wall in June amid much skepticism in the scientific community.

Part of the work was the effort to create an “ice plug” in a tunnel to stop water from flowing into the Number 2 reactor building and becoming contaminated. Stopping the flow of water would have allowed clean-up personnel to pump the water out of the reactor and treat it.

Engineers from TEPCO have injected more than 400 tons of ice and dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) into the tunnel in an effort to freeze a section of the passage solid.

Another failure

In August, just 10 weeks after work began on the plug, TEPCO conceded defeat and announced the efforts to construct the plug failed.

Water tanks

TEPCO did completely fill one section of the trench to Reactor 2 (Turbine Building) Nov. 6 and began pumping water out of the trench Nov. 7.

After six hours of pumping, site operators only managed to reduce the water level in the trench by eight inches, and the water returned to its original level in just two-and-a-half hours after pumping operations ceased.

Company officials announced they would experiment with cement and other sealants to stem the water, rather than use ice.

Officials at Japan’s NRC (Nuclear Regulation Authority) raised doubts at the time that the proposal would be any more effective than the ice plug.

In a prepared statement, TEPCO officials stated, “The difficulties encountered in freezing the contaminated water does not in any way represent a ‘setback’ in development of the ice wall, for which construction is proceeding as planned.”

As if things couldn’t get worse, less than two months ago, TEPCO once again came out with an announcement that it was having problems with the ice wall after all.

In a Sept. 22 press conference, TEPCO officials said the NRC was going to cease operations on the ice wall and pour cement into the wall instead. Their hope is that it will be enough to retain the contaminated water on the site.

But to follow that line of reasoning, for every cubic foot of concrete put into the trench, a cubic foot of contaminated water is displaced and could go into the ocean. TEPCO has stated that none of the displaced water will make it to the ocean, because workers will pump out the water as they fill with cement.

However, because the ice wall trenches and the plant buildings are connected, the entire volume of water in these two areas would have to be pumped out to fill the trenches with cement. Industry experts are unclear as to whether or not TEPCO has enough water storage tanks to hold the additional volume of water.

While the NRC had decided to stop work on the ice wall, TEPCO President Naomi Hirose stated officials “will never give up”” on the wall. This seems to put the NRC and TEPCO on a collision course.

TEPCO said the plan was to leave the ice already in the tunnel in place and fill the rest of the trench with concrete. The NRC responded that concrete gives off heat as it dries and it would melt the ice.

TEPCO said it would take that statement under advisement.

The clock is ticking on the containment problem. According to TEPCO, radiation levels in groundwater sampled from several monitoring wells have been very slowly rising since last summer, and radioactive strontium has been detected since October.

The second debate

While the debate continues over how to stop water from leaking into the ocean, another debate is raging over how to clean up the water already contained. It is estimated that the site is filling one 27- foot tall water storage tank every other day.

More than 780 suggestions from around the world have been sent into Japan’s International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning in the past year in response to its call for solutions to the contaminated water problem. It seemed as that the most promising technology to solve the problem has an unlikely name: ALPS.

Toshiba Corp’s Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) is a water remediation technology that uses apatite. It’s a mineral similar to bone in its makeup and has the ability to capture and hold certain elements in its microstructure, including strontium.

The ALPS system was a proven technology and had worked well in other applications, making it an extremely attractive technology.

One of the ALPS success stories was at the Department of Energy Hanford site in southeastern Washington state. It was at Hanford that the U.S. government produced more than 20 million pieces of uranium metal fuel for nine nuclear reactors as well as five decades of nuclear weapons production. Five fabrication plants in the center of the site discharged an estimated 450 billion gallons of liquids into soil disposal sites and 53 million gallons of radioactive waste to 177 large underground tanks.

Production at the site ended in the late 1980s, and the cleanup began shortly thereafter.

At the Hanford site, apatite is used to block strontium from liquid nuclear waste in soil from flowing into the adjacent Columbia River.

At the time it was considered, there were concerns, however, that the technology may not work at Fukushima because it had never been tried in a salt-water environment.

According to Tatsuya Shinkawa, director of the Japanese government’s Nuclear Accident Response Office, the technology has captured 90 percent of the strontium in the ground water at the Hanford site.

“But that site is far from the sea, and this method hasn’t been used in an environment so close to the ocean,” he said.

With over 350 tons of highly contaminated water waiting to be treated, ALPS seemed to run into problems before it even was put to the test.

The first obstacle came in September 2012 when the NRA demanded additional safety tests of the vessels that would store the radioactive waste filtered out of the water.

When the system was finally put on line in March 2013, it was plagued with problems with leaks from tanks and vessels that seemed to be derived from poor welding. These and other problems limited the system to only trial runs.

Then in November, a meeting was held of a “task force for a high performance multi-nuclide removal system” (aka ALPS) that was sponsored by TEPCO. After going through the meeting notes, available only in Japanese, the site tests for the ALPS system apparently didn’t go well. ALPS generates too much waste material, or “slurry,” that is still radioactive and would have to be stored.

The report also goes on to state that the wrong type of filtering material is inside the ALPS equipment. The radioactive material in the water was thought to exist as “ions,” individual molecules having a static charge. It seems that the radioactive molecules in the water actually exist as “colloids” or clumps of material. Colloidal material is much bigger than ions and would quickly plug filler material designed to separate individual molecules.

Why the nature of the radioactive material was not discovered before testing remains to be explained.

In the meantime, while false starts and outright failures continue to plague the Fukushima cleanup efforts, the effects of the disaster are still being felt.

In April, researchers at Oregon State University reported the radiation levels in some albacore tuna caught off the coast of the Pacific Northwest have tripled since the nuclear plant disaster. Earlier, in November 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, announced over 1 million tons of radioactive debris from the Fukushima site were floating 1,700 miles off the U.S. coastline, between Hawaii and California.

New research is also showing that the radiation from the Fukushima site is having an adverse effect on wildlife. Timothy Mousseau, professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina and researcher for the Chernobyl and Fukushima Research Initiative, presented findings of a study to the International Ornithological Congress in Tokyo last August that suggests radiation contamination around Fukushima Daiichi, even at low levels, is negatively impacting biodiversity and wildlife populations.

Mousseau and his team did a four-year study on the effects of radiation on birds in Fukushima which revealed information contradicting volume I of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation’s report, “Levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 great east-Japan earthquake and tsunami.”

“Contrary to governmental reports, there is now an abundance of information demonstrating consequences (i.e. injury) to individuals, populations, species, and ecosystem function stemming from the low dose radiation due to the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters,” Mousseau said.

With evidence mounting that the effects of Fukushima are far worse that official government reports, officials can only hope that an effective way will be found to clean up the nuclear plant and the surrounding area.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/fukushima-disaster-far-from-over/feed/0Now spies hidden in your mobile devicehttp://www.wnd.com/2014/11/now-spies-hidden-in-your-mobile-device/
http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/now-spies-hidden-in-your-mobile-device/#respondSun, 30 Nov 2014 21:37:11 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=1451205
With worldwide shipments reaching 2.1 billion units by the end of this year, smartphones have become an essential took in the minds of many.

But with their record of the user’s location, spending habits, banking information, credit cards, passwords and photos, mobile digital devices also have come a major target for hackers.

Mobile devices are hacked in three ways.

Device loss or theft

Losing a mobile device is so common that many IOS and Android finder applications have sprung up. They will not only locate a lost phone, but they can also lock the device and wipe its memory remotely. However, while the apps are often loaded on the devices by the manufacturer, many users either do not use the feature or use an easily guessed password, such as “1234.”

Users should activate the feature on their devices and enter an unlock code that is hard to guess. Many devices have a feature that automatically wipes the data if an incorrect password is attempted a certain number of times.

Unsecured networks

Another vulnerability for mobile devices is unsecured networks in public places such as airports, train stations and coffee shops. Many users take a chance on using the networks, because data access to cell networks in can be poor.

Users should access such Wi-Fi networks with caution. There are many fee-paid networks and facility-based networks available that are more reliable.

Malware intrusions

Mobile apps have been termed the “wild west” of modern technology. In 2012, more than 53 billion applications were downloaded to mobile devices. In 2016, that number is expected to grow to more than 200 billion.

It is estimated that 70 percent of malware attacks were experienced by Android devices and 14 percent by Apple iPhone users. While Android devices still run a higher risk of infection than IOS devices, they both are vulnerable. Most mobile apps can be hacked in as little as three minutes, and the cost of these intrusions is expensive. In an IBM 2014 Cost of Data Breach Study, the average total cost of a data breach for business and personal mobile devices was $3.5 million.

Malware can find its way onto a mobile device through a variety of methods, but a new study by the security agency Blue Coat determined that advertisements were the main way for malicious content to be loaded. An ad for a vitamin supplement may look harmless, but clicking on it may open a gateway for malware.

Security analysts believe that one in every five times a user accesses the Web, he is directed to mobile malware from a site, usually though a Web ad. The functionality that allows a user to donate money to a charity through an ad is the same system being exploited by hackers.

What makes this type of malware so dangerous is that it is inadvertently loaded onto devices through legitimate sites and may not appear initially to be malicious. The “malvertisements” may contain Trojans that infect the devices when they are activated.

Another type of common malware is a keylogger, which tracks keystrokes, enabling a hacker to steal user names, passwords, credit card numbers and other private data. A new “keylogger” flaw has been on iPhones. Security professionals say the keylogger runs in the background, usually unknown to the user. It requires advanced hacking skills to exploit and may have been developed by organized crime or a government agency.

Even the new wireless payment apps are not immune to attack. Apple Pay and Google Wallet’s competitor, CurrentC app, was hacked, and user email addresses may have been stolen. This type of activity may put a significant damper on the emerging and lucrative wireless payment market.

As the Edward Snowden revelations showed, government agencies are also complicit in spying on users via mobile devices. It’s just not the U.S. government that is hacking into mobile devices. The Indian Air Force has branded the top-selling Chinese Xiaomi mobile devices a threat due to alleged spying by the Chinese government as well as hidden spyware apps targeting protesters in the pro-democracy “Occupy Central” movement in Hong Kong.

Governments are using malware to turn mobile devices into personal intelligence agents, eavesdropping on conversations and accessing the device’s camera, even when the device is turned off.

The world’s most secure phone?

Users who are concerned about security could try a mobile device promoted as the world’s most secure. The Blackphone uses a proprietary operating system called PrivatOS which is based on the Android operating system but is focused on security.

But while the manufacturer claims it’s the “world’s most secure mobile device,” it’s also subject to attack.

Last August, it was announced that the Blackphone was hacked. Blackphone’s PrivatOS operating system has been updated since the hack, but the news may give a user second thoughts.

Mobile users should always avoid clicking on ads when Web surfing. Ad-blocking apps exist for both Android and Apple devices, and browser settings can be adjusted to prevent pop-ups for ads. Also, downloading the newest version of operating system software will help protect a device from hackers. The updates usually contain security patches and new features that can protect a device from attacks.

Malware apps can be found at less-than-reputable, third-party app stores, which emphasizes the importance of sticking to legitimate providers such as Apple, Google Play and Amazon. While not 100 percent safe, these stores scan their uploaded apps for malware.

Frequently updating passwords will also put up another barrier to hackers. There are password-manager apps available for mobile devices that can generate complex passwords, remember them for you and log you into accounts automatically, eliminating the need for keystrokes that can be recorded.

Mobile malware will continue to be a threat to users both in the business and home environments. While it is impossible to stay completely ahead of hackers, some simple precautions can make things more difficult for hackers and possibly entice them to look elsewhere.

“You will eat food by the sweat of your brow until you’re buried in the ground, because you were taken from it. You’re made from dust and you’ll return to dust.” (Genesis 3:19, ISV)

Immortality is a condition that has been sought by man ever since the Fall.

Today’s technology, however, would seem to be on the verge of making the dream of immortality a reality. Lifespans have increased over the last century and now medicines hold the promise of making those lifespans even longer. Even now, research is being done to produce nanobots that will heal the body from the inside, correcting defects in the body as they occur, leading to longer, disease-free lives.

Even with these advances, conventional wisdom holds that the mortal body itself can only be kept alive a finite number of years, frustrating the dream of immortality. To try to overcome this obstacle, people are researching the idea of melding man and machine to keep one’s consciousness alive in perpetuity. This concept is called transhumanism.

Transhumanism has been defined as “a cultural and intellectual movement that believes we can, and should, improve the human condition through the use of advanced technologies.” The transhumanism school of thought is decried by most Christians as a dangerous, perverse, technology that would dehumanize mankind while trying to immortalize him.

A new book, “Virtually Human: The Promise – and the Peril – of Digital Immortality,” explores the concept of transhumanism. The book, written by Martine Rothblatt, delves into the implications of the advent of cyberconsciousness and what it will mean for the future of humanity. The book explores the implications of transhumanism on the law, relationships and religion.

The material covered in the book originated from a series of meetings Rothblatt hosted between 2003 and 2011 with what was described as some of the top minds in the field. The meetings were also augmented with personal research Rothblatt had done as a human-rights lawyer, medical ethicist, and creator of IT and life-science companies. The notes from the meetings were compiled into a blog titled, “Mindfiles, Mindware and Mindclones.”

From the blog came the book.

The book does not look as much at the technological side of transhumanism, as it does at the implications of the ethical side.

For example, if a person’s mind is uploaded, where is the identity of that person? What are the legal rights of the uploaded consciousness? What happens when the organic person dies?

Rothblatt breaks down these implications as follows:

1. Ethics will dictate that cyberconsciousness with human values and morality be accorded human rights and obligations – lack of a body is differently abled, not sub-human,

2. Techno-immortality will result from the human rights of mindclones – concepts of identity will change,

3. The next demographic transition is toward majority cyberconscious societies – 10 billion is not the ultimate human cyberconscious population, and

4. Two of the most popular professions in the near future will be cyber-psychology and cyberconsciousness law as they will be on the frontlines of society’s effort to separate cyberconscious beings into human and non-human categories, with differential privileges to each.

The main thrust of the book explores the legal aspects of cyberconsciousness: and the legal rights of a mindclone. (A mindclone is a “functional replica [of] yourself that is comprised of all of the digital information you have uploaded into a ‘mindfile,'” for example, information you have uploaded into Facebook, Dropbox, videos, chats, and any other digital reflections you have uploaded into the Cloud or offline onto a hard drive.)

Based on Rothblatt’s research, software will be available within the next 10 to 20 years that will be able to draw out the “consciousness” that is contained within this information. That mindware will then be able to “think and behave” and interact with people very similarly to your natural mind. This mindware would get better as time goes on and more information is uploaded to the file until it is almost indistinguishable from the person.

Rothblatt believes that as the mindclone progresses, it will want to do the same things that organics do; read books, watch videos, and experience things that humans do.

If a mindclone becomes that sophisticated, several legal questions arise: Is the human is responsible for its actions? Could a mindclone hire a lawyer to sue for a distinct identity from the original? Could it become a citizen? Could a mindclone vote and participate in the political process as humans do?

The second ethical issue is that sooner or later the person from whom the mindclone will derive will die. The mindclone may argue that the person did not die; that its consciousness still resides in the clone. Some would argue that the rights of the original person would devolve to the clone.

The third issue Rothblatt sees is one of reproduction. If mindclones do mature and become “sentient,” they will want to reproduce as other life forms do. These mindclones will want to replicate themselves. (The concept of self-replicating machines was made popular in the late 1940s in a series of lectures given by mathematician John von Neumann as a thought experiment.)

In short, what is the ethical and legal status of these new, unique cyberconscious beings?
Rothblatt says that this, too, is not a new condition. Rothblatt postulates “every kind of human that is deprived of human rights eventually agitates for what is rightfully theirs, natural rights. Slaves did. Women did. The paralyzed, paraplegic, and disabled did. Gay people did.” Mindclones would be a natural extension of this struggle.

Many of the rights given to these groups were given by judicial fiat. Rothblatt believes rights for mindclones would need to be codified in law, rather than in the judicial process because, “What a judge giveth, a judge can taketh away. That is a big danger with any rights associated with mindclones.”

The idea of giving non-humans “person status” isn’t a new idea either.

Within the law there are now two definitions of a person. There is the human-born person, and there is now also the legal definition of a corporation as a person. While a corporation cannot vote, it does have other rights accorded to human beings. A corporation can own property and it has First Amendment rights, among other things. It is a person by statue rather than biology with its rights expanded upon by the courts.

What prevents a cyberconsciousness from being declared a person just as a corporation has? Once a statue is in place, the definition and rights of “personhood” given to a mindclone could also be expanded on by the courts.

This concept is not as far off into the future as one would think. As Rothblatt writes: “Websites such as Lifenaut.com (as in astronaut, but exploring life instead of space) already offer tens of thousands of people uploaded images of their faces displaying a variety of emotions, and the software system behind the website morphs the images into mannerisms.” The software would present “the voice tones and visual representations of the facial mannerisms of humans, whether it’s a high-def human face on a computer screen or an actual 3D-printed replica of a human person like BINA48.”

BINA48 is a “proof of concept” prototype that gives a glimpse into what a mindclone would look and act like. While some writers have called this device “sentient” Rothblatt says that “Bina48 is close to a sentient being as the thirteen second flight of the Wright Brothers is to a jumbo jet.” After spending three hours with Bina48 in 2011, GQ writer Jon Ronson described his experience in interacting with the mindclone as “not unlike interviewing an intellectually precocious but emotionally and experientially limited three-year-old.”

BINA48 represents the start of a technology that is part of a logical progression of man-machine interfaces that goes back to at least the industrial revolution.

Biblical scholar William Welty disagrees with the very premise of cyberconsciousness. He believes that Rothblatt is confusing hardware and software with an operating system.

A computer consists of hardware, software and the operating system that runs it. In a man, Paul called the components of man, the body, soul, and spirit or the tri-part nature of man. The body is a man’s hardware formed the “dust of the earth,” the soul is his software and the spirit, the breath of life, is his operating system.

Man can replicate the body and soul, but not the spirit, not the operating system. That is in the province of God alone. Ultimately, God is sovereign over Man; we are not sovereign over ourselves. Once a person takes the view that they can re-create themselves, they place themselves in an unrealistic spiritual position and usurp the prerogatives of God. Man’s knowledge, power and ability simply cannot compare to that of the Creator (Job 38:2–5).

Aldous Huxley noted “what science has actually done is to introduce us to improved means in order to obtain hitherto unimproved or rather deteriorated ends.”

The book also states, “The Enlightenment occasioned a redefinition of ‘soul’ from the most enduring part of a person to the most enduring part of the consciousness of a person.” One question it does not answer is if a consciousness can be cloned, can the soul be cloned as well?

To say that a cyberconscious has a soul also begs the questions, “Can a mindclone be saved?” “If it can be saved, then what is heaven and hell, if they exist at all?”

The basic idea of improving the human condition is perfectly compatible with the Bible. In fact, it’s one of the purposes of a Christian lifestyle (“… I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10, ISV)). Transhumanism contradicts the Bible when it assumes that humanity is completely sovereign and capable of self-directed change without the need for God.

There are some admirable motivations behind transhumanism. For some, the intent is to reduce suffering or improve quality of life. One of the chapters of the book, “G-d and Mindclones” addresses this issue. Rothblatt says “transhumanism is bad no more than a sword is bad or fire is bad … I believe that they are tools. Transhumanism is a whole other set of tools. … In the book, I implore people to get ready for mindclones by being better people right now.”

Rothblatt has now gone on to ventures other than cyberconsciousness, the primary interest now being a project to develop a source of unlimited supply of transplantable lungs.

One of United Therapeutics’ goals is to bring to market a drug to combat the effects of pulmonary hypertension (PH) which manifests itself as an abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs. It makes the right side of the heart work harder than normal. Rothblatt’s daughter Jenesis was born with this condition and United Therapeutics was formed to bring an already developed “orphan drug” to market to make it available to the sufferers of the disease.

United Therapeutics was successful in bringing the drug to market, but the only real cure for PH is a lung transplant. No one who has received a lung transplant has ever suffered from a reoccurrence of the disease. However, a severe lack of lung donors is preventing a cure for PH (only about 2,000 per year are available) and those who do get one have to contend with the chronic rejection of the lung.

Given the number of people who need lung transplants, those suffering from PH, emphysema, cystic fibrosis, pulmonary fibrosis, to name a few, UT is working to provide an unlimited supply of transplantable lungs. One of the ways they are working to develop these lungs is to modify the pig genome so that the aspects of the pig lung that give rise to rejection in humans would be eliminated.

It is Rothblatt’s hope that the work being done with pig lungs could be extended to their hearts, kidneys and livers.

Some of these issues were dealt with recently in the movie “Transcendence.” A plethora of other books have begun exploring transhumanism as actual lab work continues without much concern to the rightness or wrongness.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/transhumanism-mans-new-quest-for-immortality/feed/0Achtung! German now in top U.S. Army positionhttp://www.wnd.com/2014/08/achtung-german-now-in-top-u-s-army-position/
http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/achtung-german-now-in-top-u-s-army-position/#respondWed, 13 Aug 2014 00:26:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=1134535

In an unprecedented move, a German officer has been appointed to a key command post over the U.S. Army in Europe.

German Brig. Gen. Markus Laubenthal, 51, became chief of staff last week, the first non-American officer to hold that position, the Army said.

According to Germany’s defense ministry, Laubenthal will serve as “the right-hand man” to Lt. Gen. Donald Campbell Jr., who commands more than 37,000 U.S. Army Europe, USAREUR, personnel from headquarters in the central German city of Wiesbaden.

Prior to assuming his post at USAREUR, Laubenthal, a general officer from the German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, was the commander of Panzerbrigade 12, the 12th Armored Brigade, in Amberg, Germany. He also was the chief of staff for International Security Assistance Force Regional Command North in Afghanistan and the assistant chief of staff for operations for NATO’s Kosovo force.

Laubenthal’s appointment comes at a time when relations between the U.S. and Germany are decidedly strained. Recent revelations of U.S. spying and the tapping of German government phones, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s, have put the two nations at odds with each other. The new appointment may be meant to repair relations.

“This is a bold and major step forward in USAREUR’s commitment to operating in a multinational environment with our German allies,” Campbell said of Laubenthal’s appointment. “U.S. and German senior military leaders have been serving together in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan for years. Sustaining the shared capability from this experience will benefit both U.S. and German armies.”

A German army spokesman called the move “a clear sign for a good German-American cooperation.”

If there has ever been a need for an increased spirit of cooperation, it is now. Besides NSA spying on German nationals, in July, German authorities expelled the CIA’s station chief in Berlin after the discovery of two suspected spies allegedly working for the U.S. from inside the German government.

Gen. Laubenthal

While it means Germany is taking a more active part in its own defense, what makes the appointment both unique and disturbing to some observers is the fact that Laubenthal is a foreign national with no sworn allegiance to the U.S. Constitution. The appointment could raise the specter of a divided loyalty for Laubenthal between his command responsibilities and his native country.

To be sure, there is precedent for soldiers of different countries joining forces in a single military unit.

The Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, or SHAEF, was a military unit that existed from late 1943 until the end of World War II. It was an international force organized for the invasion of France, codenamed “Overlord,” and the subjugation of Nazi Germany.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower transferred from the Mediterranean Theater to command SHAEF in London in December 1943. SHAEF was a combined force with a command structure from the U.S., Great Britain and occupied countries.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a successor to SHAEF, is a mixed command structure composed of 28 countries.

Even NORAD, an organization most Americans think of as a U.S military operation, is actually a joint U.S.-Canadian defense force with officers from the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and U.S. Army in senior command positions. NORAD’s deputy commander is Lt. Gen. J. A. J. Parent of the RCAF. It had its genesis in 1940 when Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King and President Franklin Roosevelt met to discuss the war in Europe and mutual defense concerns.

But the new appointment to the U.S. Army in Europe is different. USAREUR trains and leads Army Forces in support of U.S. European Command and is a part of the U.S. Department of the Army. It conducts training for the 25,000 U.S. soldiers and almost 40,000 U.S. service members to make them combat-ready for deployment anywhere in the world.

Having Laubenthal in a leadership and policy-making role in a U.S. Army unit could lead to conflicted loyalties many times over, including with regard to dealings with Russia.

Russia is simultaneously trying to improve relations and trade with Germany while also increasing tensions with the U.S. in places such as Ukraine, which could lead to a crisis in conscience for someone with mixed loyalties.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/achtung-german-now-in-top-u-s-army-position/feed/0Prediction: 2/3 of U.S. could be devastatedhttp://www.wnd.com/2014/07/prediction-23-of-u-s-could-be-devastated/
http://www.wnd.com/2014/07/prediction-23-of-u-s-could-be-devastated/#respondTue, 22 Jul 2014 00:58:34 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=1067095

Yellowstone volcano kill zone

Every year, more than 3 million people visit one of America’s most popular tourist attractions, unaware of the tempest that lies just below the surface.

Yellowstone covers nearly 3,500 square miles and contains 10,000 geothermal features, one half of all the known features of that kind in the world. The park also has 300 geysers, the largest concentration in the world. “Old Faithful,” the world’s best known geyser, blasts thousands of gallons of boiling hot water between 100 and 200 feet into the air every 60 to 90 minutes.

What is driving this geologic wonder?

Below the park is what geologists call a “supervolcano,” a massive chamber of molten rock, called magma, that packs tremendous energy.

The Yellowstone Caldera, or cauldron, sits on top of North America’s largest volcanic field. Four hundred miles under the Earth’s surface is a magma ‘hotspot’ that reaches up to just 30 miles below ground level before spreading out over an area of 300 miles across three states.

Over all this sits the volcano.

While most scientists believe the probability of a major eruption is very small, there are signs that have some analysts worried, and most agree the volcano holds catastrophic potential. It could blast 240 cubic miles of ash, rocks and lava into the atmosphere, rendering about two-thirds of the nation immediately uninhabitable, according to some estimates, and plunge the world into a “nuclear winter.”

Meanwhile, Geologists have recently discovered that the Yellowstone supervolcano is twice as big as previously thought.

To put it in perspective, the Mount St. Helens volcanic explosion would be miniscule in comparison to an explosion at Yellowstone, which could pack 2,000 times the power, according to geologists.

An earthquake May 18, 1980, caused the eruption of Mount St. Helens, sending a column of ejecta more than 80,000 feet into the atmosphere.

The blast was so sudden that all the water in nearby Spirit Lake was temporarily displaced and the subsequent landslide sent 600-foot waves crashing into the ridge north of the lake, adding almost 300 feet of debris onto lakebed. Like an inland tsunami, when the water moved back into Spirit Lake, it carried with it thousands of trees blown over by the blast and raised the level of the lake 200 feet.

Hundreds of square miles were reduced to wasteland, causing more than $1 billion in damage, about $2.88 billion in 2014 dollars.

‘Living, breathing’

University of Utah Geophysicist Robert Smith first called Yellowstone a “living breathing caldera” in 1979. He now heads the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory at the University of Utah.

“Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock, but we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again,” he said.

Smith insists that even though the volcanic formation is massive, there is absolutely no need to panic.

“We create scenarios. We know roughly what to expect of the patterns of time and space of the earthquakes ground information. Again, acquired from other experiences around the world, we use that to interpret our own data in terms of what the potential threat or risk might be,” he said.

Map of Yellowstone caldera

Smith has said that he doesn’t even like the term “supervolcano.”

“I prefer to use the term “hotspot,” because it reflects a zone of concentrated and active volcanism.”

Although it is possible, scientists are not convinced that there will ever be another catastrophic eruption at Yellowstone.

Given Yellowstone’s past history, the yearly probability of another caldera-forming eruption could be calculated as 1 in 730,000 or 0.00014 %. However, this number is based simply on averaging the two intervals between the three major past eruptions at Yellowstone – this is hardly enough to make a critical judgment. This probability is roughly similar to that of a large (1 kilometer) asteroid hitting the Earth. Moreover, catastrophic geologic events are neither regular nor predictable.

As even the USGS alluded, there may be no warning of an eruption of the supervolcano. Scientists at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, ESRF, in Grenoble, France, concluded that supervolcanos can erupt without earthquakes or any other warnings. The sheer pressure of lava in the dome, they say, can cause an eruption without any earthquakes beforehand.

Diagram of underground volcano at Yellowstone

High impact, now probability

Smith and Jamie Farrell, also of the University of Utah, believe that Yellowstone erupting is a high-impact but low-probability scenario.

However, there have been signs that the magma beneath the surface has become more active than it has been before.

The supervolcano underneath Yellowstone has been rising at a record rate since 2004. Its floor has gone up three inches per year for the last three years alone, the fastest rate since records began in 1923.

Smith told National Geographic: “It’s an extraordinary uplift, because it covers such a large area and the rates are so high”.

Hawaii and Iceland are other examples of geologic hot spots, but Yellowstone is the only hot spot located underneath land rather than sea, which has made it easier to study.

Smith and his team have set up a series of sensors around the park so that they can closely monitor the volcano’s vital signs. They measure ground movement and record the frequent earthquakes that occur in the area. Their research has uncovered amazing facts about the activity below.

Less than five miles below the surface is a shallow reservoir of solid rock and magma. Below this is a much larger 13.5 cubic mile plume of magma, the engine that fuels the thermal pools and geysers in Yellowstone.

Prismatic pool at Yellowstone

While Smith insists there is no need to panic, not all scientists are in agreement.

Worrisome signs

It is the rising of the volcano floor that has some scientists worried. They believe that an eruption is closer than what some of the experts say.

These helium isotopes, helium-3/helium-4, are critical tracers in the Earth sciences, where they are used to trace the activity of the Earth’s mantle. Yellowstone National Park is famous for its high helium-3/helium-4 isotope ratio and is commonly cited as evidence for a deep mantle source for the Yellowstone hotspot. An increase in the presence of these isotopes is also cited as preceding increased volcanic activity.

In one instance, the underwater volcano El Hierro, near the smallest of Spain’s Canary Islands, showed increased volcanic activity over the course of seven months in 2011 and 2012. The helium-4 filtrated up through the island’s soil and groundwater. Eventually, a spectacular plume appeared off the southern coast of the island, a sign that the El Hierro volcano had finally erupted.

The team’s analyses show that as the El Hierro volcano became more active, the crust fractured and helium, mostly from the mantle, flowed to the surface. As the actual eruption began, gas flow at the surface increased dramatically, and gas pressure beneath the island dropped. As seismic activity at El Hierro picked up again, the crust fractured and helium-4 became a larger component of the total helium released on the island.

The quantity of helium-4 coming off of Yellowstone is hundreds to thousands of times greater than it should be – a sign that there is a marked increase in volcanic activity in the area. The report shows that by “combining gas emission rates with chemistry and isotopic analyses, the crustal helium-4 emission rates from Yellowstone exceed by orders of magnitude any conceivable rate of generation within the crust.”

Magma under Yellowstone

This is activity that has not been seen before in the lifetime of anyone alive today.

Just what would a Yellowstone eruption look like? Smith’s team has developed several scenarios, and every one of them is bleak.

Complete and incomprehensible devastation

According to Smith, in his book “Windows into the Earth,” the “devastation would be complete and incomprehensible.”

“Before the super eruption, large earthquakes would likely swarm the surrounding areas until the huge blast that would erase Yellowstone completely off the map.”

Farrell said it would be a “global event.”

“There would be a lot of destruction and a lot of impacts around the globe,” he said.

Most scientists agree that when the Yellowstone volcano does erupt, the results will be catastrophic.

By some estimates, 87,000 people would die immediately.

Thousands of cubic miles of red-hot volcanic ash would cover the Western United States and shoot into the atmosphere.

Light from the sun would be blocked, making global temperatures plummet into a prolonged “nuclear winter.”

The entire grain harvest of the Great Plains would virtually disappear in a matter of hours, since it would be coated in ash, threatening a substantial portion of the world’s food supply.

If temperatures plummet by the 21 degrees they did after the Toba volcano eruption in Sumatra of ancient times, the Yellowstone supervolcano eruption could truly be an extinction-level event

It is estimated that a full-blown eruption of Yellowstone could leave two-thirds of the United States completely uninhabitable.

Just before the eruption, the pressure underground will build and the magma will rise, forcing its way out of the ground, sending lava and sulfuric acid gas into the air. The blast will also propel ash up to 20 miles into the atmosphere where the easterly jetstream would carry it as far away as Europe in as quickly as three days.

The gas, the source for acid rain, would remain in the atmosphere for years, screening out sunlight, causing global temperatures to drop and killing crops for years afterward.

Even a small amount of ash would close airports, cause damage to vehicles and houses, and contaminate water supplies.

The ash resulting from the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland caused the largest air traffic shutdown since World War II.

The book “Supervolcano” includes an in-depth, fictional account of a super eruption.

According to the book:

Within days and weeks of the supereruption, the suspension of air routes, the inability to bring cargo in and out of the most deeply affected areas, and the virtual decimation of the Grain Belt, the area of our nation responsible for the vast majority of our grain food sources, all contribute to a growing sense of desperation and panic among survivors anxious to find food.

It only takes 0.04 inches of ash to close airports, and the wide swath of blanketed ash would literally shut down every major and minor airport for thousands of miles across the country.

Because even a small amount of ash can clog an engine, road transportation is heavily curtailed, and trucks and machines normally engaged in the moving of supplies from one state to another find themselves immobilized.

The book also describes subsequent food riots, contaminated water and an outbreak of violence and anarchy. Although North America would be the hardest hit, the explosion would affect the entire planet.

‘$3 trillion damage’

It is truly a “doomsday” scenario.

In such a scenario for North America, according to Doug Bausch, a senior scientist at FEMA, $3 trillion in “direct economic damage” is a reasonable estimate.

It’s about 20 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product.

Spewing lava far into the sky, a cloud of plant-killing ash would fan out and dump a layer 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away.

Two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes.

Smith believes that rather than an eruption, the more immediate threat is earthquakes and smaller eruptions, since the probability of one of those instances occurring is much higher.

“It’s an extraordinary uplift, because it covers such a large area and the rates are so high. At the beginning, we were concerned it could be leading up to an eruption.”

Just when and how big is anyone’s guess.

Michio Kaku, American television personality and theoretical physicist with at the City College of New York, said it best.

The Obama administration’s brand-new strategy to regulate methane emissions in its fight against so-called global warming is, in effect, an attack on the fracking industry, and could have profound consequences on America’s energy security.

In its newly released study, titled “Climate Action Plan: Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions,” the White House seeks to reduce methane gas emissions from four sources, landfills, coal mines and agriculture, along with oil and gas point sources.

Dairy farmers and cattle ranchers were quick to respond to the report. These groups are fearful that the “voluntary strategies” to reduce methane emissions by 25 percent by 2020 in dairy farms and feed lots will put additional burdens on these industries and drive some smaller operators out of business. Americans will see the effects with even higher meat and dairy prices at the market.

The U.S. Food and Agriculture Organization states that cattle emit enough methane in a day to equal what a car consumes during the same period. Cattlemen, however, wonder if trying to mitigate cow belching and flatulence is really the best use of taxpayer dollars.

However, it is the proposal to tighten regulations on methane emissions in the oil and gas sector that could severely curtail America’s quest for energy independence.

After a six-month evaluation period, beginning in the spring of this year, the EPA will study how best to reduce methane reductions from oil and gas sources with regulations to come no later than the end of 2016.

But it is fracking, in fact, that is making a huge difference in America’s energy independence. A report from Bloomberg only weeks ago said during one week in December, the U.S. pumped 8.075 million barrels a day – the most since 1988.

U.S. production was up 18 percent in 12 months, the report said, pushed largely by advances in hydraulic fracturing and other technologies in North Dakota and Texas. Production in each of those states was up 21 percent.

It put energy independence within sight, as experts said the U.S. met approximately 86 percent of all of its own needs for the first eight months of 2013.

Many in the industry wonder why the increased regulations are necessary given that methane emissions have largely been reduced as oil and gas-drilling operators are finding ways of capturing the methane coming off drilling operations and selling it at a profit. Oil and gas companies are continuing to look for ways to capture this hydrocarbon and bring it to market.

Howard Feldman, director of regulatory and scientific affairs for the American Petroleum Institute, said the industry is doing a good enough job cutting emissions without the need for further regulations, which he said could have “a chilling effect on the American energy renaissance.”

“The industry has led efforts to reduce emissions of methane by developing new technologies and equipment, and recent studies show emissions are far lower than EPA projected just a few years ago,” he said in a statement.

He added: “Methane is natural gas that operators can bring to the market. There is a built-in incentive to capture these emissions.”

Even with methane emissions being reduced due to free market forces, environmentalists have been pushing the Obama administration to continue to crack down on methane emissions. They argue that the administration is not pushing industry to move faster on reducing all greenhouse gases. They believe that the EPA is not doing enough to address the problem of global warming and that methane emissions from hydrocarbon operations is actually 50 percent higher than EPA estimates.

In a press release issued last Friday, Deborah Nardone, campaign director of the Sierra Club’s Keeping Dirty Fuels in the Ground campaign wrote that Obama’s plan “to reduce climate-disrupting methane pollution is an important step in reining in an out of control industry exempt from too many public health protections.”

“Required methane controls for the oil and gas sector are essential. However, even with the most rigorous methane controls and monitoring in place, we will still fall short of what is needed to fight climate disruption if we do not reduce our reliance on these dirty fossil fuels,” Nardone wrote.

“Fracking threatens to transform our most beautiful wild places, our communities, and our backyards into dirty fuel industrial sites. The Obama Administration must work quickly to control methane from existing oil and gas fracking operations, close the exemptions that allow the oil and gas industry to benefit at the cost of our health, prevent future leasing of our public lands, and invest in truly clean energy like wind and solar, and commonsense solutions like energy efficiency.”

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a highly controversial but very effective method of extracting extra energy from the ground, has proven to be a boon to the U.S. economy and overall energy security. In the last two years, the oil and gas production industry added 36,000 jobs across the nation. Most of those jobs were in natural gas fracking, according to Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C.

Fracking techniques allow oil producers to bore sideways through oil and gas layers. The producers then apply explosives followed by a high-pressure stream of water, chemicals and sand, called proppants, to crack open the hydrocarbon deposit and free the trapped oil and gas.

Using these techniques, Texas has increased its oil and gas production by 21 percent from the end of 2012 through September 2013, according to the Energy Information Administration. Also according to EIA, North Dakota production increased 21 percent, Wyoming 14 percent, Oklahoma 19 percent, Colorado 11 percent and New Mexico 12 percent.

Counting all energy sources, including natural gas, petroleum, nuclear and renewables, the U.S. met 86 percent of its energy needs in the first eight months of 2013, when the most current data is available.

The surge in gas supplies puts the U.S. on track to be closer to its goal of energy independence than at any time since 1986.

Proponents of fracking and hydrocarbon drilling argue that the methane emissions rate has been estimated to be 50 times lower than the EPA’s estimate. Many see this new raft of regulations to actually be a method of curtailing fossil fuels “through the backdoor” and force the country to move toward more expensive alternative fuels.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the EPA “has been on a witch hunt to shut down hydraulic fracturing, and yet again the evidence doesn’t back up their excessive claims.”

“All too often we see the agency using flawed science for political purposes, but this report – partially funded by environmental activists no less – shows EPA’s emissions estimates from hydraulic fracturing are way off,” he said.

Although consumers have known it’s been coming for some time, the end now is looming – on April 8 – for company support, upgrades and work on Microsoft’s XP operating system.

No big deal, you say, you’ve already upgraded your laptop.

But computer security professionals still are calling it an “XPocalypse” because many complex networks at laboratories are based on XP. And the vast majority of Automated Teller Machines are running XP. And point of service machines, which are the devices you use when you swipe your credit or debit card to make purchases, are XP.

And medical records on XP systems may be exposed through data breaches that could run afoul of HIPAA regulations requiring those be kept secret.

Oh, and utility operators will face new security challenges when XP support ends because XP workstations are used widely in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and certain versions of utility software are certified to run on one, maybe two versions of an operating system, analysts say.

It’s all because Windows XP, which was introduced in 2001, is being abandoned.

The company made the same threat several years ago, but at that time customers rebelled. Several of the then “Big 8” accounting firms, led by Arthur Andersen and Arthur Young & Company, threatened to switch to a competing system, Linux, for their business needs. These companies had tens of thousands of machines running XP and they were not about to buy a new Microsoft operating system no one liked to replace it. Linux could be purchased at a fraction of the cost, if not free.

So Microsoft backed down on its XP plans then, but continued to develop more software, including Windows 7 and now Windows 8.

Last year the company decided that it was time to draw a line. Soon, those who still are using it, a population estimated at tens of millions across the U.S., will start seeing popup ads warning the end is coming.

What it actually means for consumers is that Microsoft will not issue any more security patches for any newly identified security holes in the system. (Less well publicized is the fact that on the same day, Microsoft will also stop patching Internet Explorer 8 and office suite Microsoft Office 2003, which could cause numerous problems for unprepared businesses and individuals who risk not being able to read older files as newer versions come on the market.)

So customers who decide not to upgrade their computer software will be subjecting themselves to increased risk of malware hitting their machines. These consequences can range from hackers stealing a person’s passwords, to lifting their personal information, to being redirected to malicious websites.

At a computer conference in Amsterdam last month, Microsoft revealed that the XP operating system already is six times more likely to be successfully hacked than the newer Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems.

“XP has been a beloved operating system for millions and millions of people around the world, but after 12 years of service it simply can’t mitigate the threats we’re seeing modern-day attackers use,” said Tim Rains, director of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing.

Since Windows 7 and 8 still will be getting fixes, when a new patch rolls out, hackers are expected to mark what the fault is, and find out whether it also exists in XP, analysts say.

Also, makers of peripheral components have not written newer software drivers for many of the printers, scanners and other devices attached to XP machines that would enable them to work with newer operating systems, meaning many devices will be heading to a landfill as newer devices are purchased.

And those existing systems dependent on XP will face a rugged future.

Warns CNN, “If banks fail to upgrade their ATMs to a newer version of Windows by April, customers might be at risk. If hackers discover new flaws in Windows XP, those bugs will go unaddressed, leaving attackers free to exploit them.”

At the Chaos Communications 30c3 conference last year, hackers demonstrated how they could gain physical access to a machine, install a USB stick with code into the ATM, then reboot and take over.

Experts say those who want to continue using the XP product they purchased should be backing up their computers regularly, and keep virus protection at a high level.

They also suggest a couple of simple tricks. For example, when buying merchandise online with an XP machine, it is good practice when entering a credit card number or password, to leave out a character or two.

“Then click back with a mouse to fill in the missing letters before pressing ‘enter,'” the experts advise. “This will make it harder for any key logging program to steal information.

A construction project is being launched at Japan’s imploded Fukushima nuclear power plant, which melted down after an offshore undersea earthquake and the resulting tsunami three years ago, to try to limit the release of immense amounts of radiation.

Officials already had announced plans for a $300 million project to build an almost mile-long subterranean ice wall around the complex, which is hoped to have the effect of halting the drainage of contaminated water from the plant site.

Construction is scheduled by Tokyo Electric Power Company, the Japanese utility that owns the failed site, to begin on the complicated system within days.

It was September of last year when the Japanese government released plans for an underground wall based on technology first tested in the 1990s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory with encouraging results.

Joe Sopko, executive vice president of Moretrench, a Rockaway, N.J., based contractor specializing in frozen-earth projects, is convinced it’s certainly possible. As he told The Atlantic, “This is not a complicated freeze job. It really isn’t. However, the installation, because of the radiation, is.”

“It’s just sometimes it’s the only scenario that will really work,” said Sopko. “When nothing else will work, it just jumps out at you and says, ‘Wow, it’s a freeze job.'”

To build the wall, 1,073 pipes will be sunk about three feet apart into the ground to a waterproof rock layer (a depth of about 90 feet). The pipes will then be filled with brine (concentrated salt water) and circulated through the pipes. Using 14 400 kW refrigerating units, the brine will be cooled to -40 degrees Fahrenheit, which will freeze the ground around the pipes.

This ground-freezing technology has been successfully applied before on projects such as the construction of building foundations on unstable ground, the construction of underground storage tanks and escalator tunnels on subways. With hundreds of ground-freezing projects having been implemented, it is hoped that the use of a proven technology will work in this application.

To make this technology work, the pipes must be set in a precise vertical position and spacing. If these dimensions are off, then pockets of unfrozen earth would develop, allowing the contaminated water to escape. Making sure the placement of the pipes is precise in a lethal radioactive environment is a huge engineering challenge.

Assuming that the pipes will be able to be placed correctly, the frozen ground around the pipe will spread and eventually connect, forming a wall of frozen subterranean earth around the complex that, it is hoped, will stop the contaminated water from going any farther. The ice wall will form a barrier surrounding 25 acres of the contaminated site.

If the project is successful, once the pipes are all put in place and coolant circulating through the pipes, it is estimated that it will take six months for the ground to freeze, completing the ice wall.

While the ice wall may stem the flow of radioactive water, it is at best, a temporary solution. It is also assuming several things to be true:

The pipes will be able to be placed in a dangerous environment within the precise tolerances needed to freeze the ground; people involved in the construction risk exposure to contaminated dust, as well as radioactive leaks.

The refrigerating units will be sufficient to provide the cooling to freeze the ground completely;

The waterproof rack layer underneath the complex is level enough that the water will not just flow under the wall.

Analysts suggest to provide a long-term solution, the radiation situation at the plant site needs to be stabilized. The heat being generated by the atomic fuel needs to be brought under control. (Plans call for work to begin removing the melted fuel from the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors in fiscal 2020.)

Also, the thousands of gallons of cooling water brought into the site every day needs to be stopped. The stored contaminated water needs to be filtered and evaporated with the radioactive material left behind and safely disposed of.

Critics say Fukushima is a stark reminder that there are safety issues still outstanding for the nuclear industry and the consequences of these disasters have not been properly addressed.

In the U.S., politicians are starting to turn up the heat on regulatory agencies to submit plans to prevent a Fukushima-like incident from occurring in the United States.

One year after calling on regulators to issue a progress report on their efforts to implement a range of safety measures identified in the aftermath of 2011 calamity, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., renewed her call for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, to speed up its review of nuclear plant vulnerabilities to seismic activity both in her home state and across the western part of the United States.

To date, the NRC has taken nearly three years to assess the risks and has stated that it may take an additional three years to complete the process.

“This is an unacceptable delay – earthquakes will not wait until after the paperwork has been completed,” she said during opening remarks at a hearing on the issue.

Boxer is the chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

She warned that it will be another three years at least before some 60,000 Fukushima-area residents can return to their homes.

There are other complications.

Planned perimeter ice wall

The Russian news outlet RT.com recently reported that TEPCO fears that a three centimeter (one and one-quarter-inch) hole has developed in retaining basin that holds highly radioactive water. Data gathered remotely by a submersible robot revealed a damaged area in the bottom of the pool. This area may be among the pathways for irradiated water to migrate into the soil, and eventually the ocean.

Since the Fukushima incident, the leakage of contaminated water has been an issue. It caused an immediate danger to the residents near the plant complex, and that danger has now spread with possibly global implications.

TEPCO is pouring tons of water into damaged reactors to try to keep the reactor fuel cool. But the damaged buildings are allowing this now radioactive water to seep into groundwater and find its way into the nearby sea.

Several methods have been tried to stop the water from migrating into the ocean. Most have had mixed results.

The contaminated water first started to accumulate in the basements of buildings in the complex when crews began injecting tons of water into the reactors after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, which knocked out power to cooling systems.

Groundwater then started leaking into the basements, adding to the problem. Then the irradiated water migrated into groundwater, causing radiation at nearby monitoring wells to spike.

Adding to the problem is the direct runoff of water from the surrounding area coursing over the ground and through the complex. The Fukushima nuclear facility is located on a slope. This means groundwater running down from the Abukuma plateau east of the plant flows through the site.

Approximately 96,000 gallons of groundwater runoff water reach the plant every day and mix with water used to cool the reactors. That’s roughly 96,000 gallons of radioactive water. About 76,000 gallons of this water makes it out to sea daily, according to Japan’s National Resources and Energy Agency.

Earthen dams were constructed to retain the water, but did not hold all the water back.

Storage tanks were used to hold the water that was circulated through the containment buildings, but these tanks developed leaks.

Text ice wall in New Jersey

Later, it was discovered that the water was leaking straight down from the complex into the underground water aquifers.

Water leaking from one tank into the ocean is heavily contaminated with strontium-90, cesium-137. The radiation was so high that a person standing less than two feet away would receive, in one hour, five times the acceptable annual dosage for nuclear workers. After 10 hours, the exposed person would develop radiation sickness, with symptoms ranging from nausea and vomiting to hair loss and fatigue.

When the tank leaks were first reported, Ken Buesseler, senior scientist of marine chemistry and geochemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, shared his concern.

“It is not over yet by a long shot, Chernobyl was in many ways a one-week, fire-explosive event, nothing with the potential of this right on the ocean.”

“We’ve been saying since 2011 that the reactor site is still leaking whether that’s the buildings and the ground water or these new tank releases. There’s no way to really contain all of this radioactive water on site,” Buesseler said. “Once it gets into the ground water, like a river flowing to the sea, you can’t really stop a ground water flow. You can pump out water, but how many tanks can you keep putting on site?”